MEDIA & MESSAGE

Media is a strange lens at times to interpret, navigate and understand the world.

It has legacy with its fourth estate coat of arms.

A badge and shield perhaps under an old-school cloak, championing an ability to frame issues of the day.

To quote the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

“In England they were the three groups with representation in Parliament, namely, the nobility, the clergy, and the common people. Some other group, like the mob or the public press, that had an unofficial but often great influence on public affairs, was called the fourth estate. In the 19th century, fourth estate came to refer exclusively to the press, and now it's applied to all branches of the news media.”

We have seen how media and social media colour how the few and many think and act.

Trends in generative AI will change things in ways those before us could only imagine, hope or fear.

If I look back over a congested river I have swam through, seven books helped me consider, navigate, deconstruct and interpret things within the broader realms of fiction and non-fiction:

1)??? ‘The Red Balloon’ - Albert Lamorisse / 1956

2)??? ‘The Minority Report’ - Philip K Dick (PKD) / 1956

3)??? ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ - Hunter S. Thompson / 1971

4)??? 'The Death of Economics' - Paul Omerod / ?1997

5)??? ‘Enduring Love’ - Ian McEwan / 1997

6)???‘Microtrends: The small forces behind today’s big changes’ - Mark Pen / 2007

7)???‘The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable’ - Nassim Nicholas Taleb / 2007

1956, 1971, 1997 and 2007. Big years in history storylines.

These books didn’t have an inside edge on real-world stories that followed.

The authors simply explored things given what they saw playing out, what they probed.

It’s a bit like the impact of first reading JG Ballard’s ‘The Drowned World’ from the early 1960s, which opens with: ‘Soon it would be too hot. In this fictional world of seismic change, where those few left want to head north, the main character heads south. It fingers a bruise within your head - where would you go?

More broadly, the books above spoke and speak well today with a sense of time, place and relevance.

PKD, for one, reflected on many things on paper, with a drink and through his veins. He wrote stories that informed pivotal and cult movies in popular culture over the past 40 years – all centred on themes of individual autonomy, identity and the role of one-amid-many in a civic, corporate / state system.

Markers in a bigger, yet-to-dry canvas.

Incidentally, I have worked at brands where the paint was still wet before a reveal after an overnight refresh to reposition a revised message, and one where a strategy pivot was shared with a ‘get it done now' team after a few executives went for a weekend away to gather year-ahead thoughts.

Together, these books speak to nudges, prompts, questions and thoughts that sometimes help explain why we need to understand the journey we are are really on before we decode what happened today and what might happen tomorrow.

Gavin Esler, writing in ‘Lessons from the Top’ in 2013, talked of the value in leaders being able to clearly frame, effectively from a triangle – narratives focused on where have they been, where are they today, where are they taking us?

Navigating words from shapes and parables, joining dots has value.

Earlier this year, I was at a Page Society event at the London Stock Exchange where Tina Fordham was among the speakers. (Thank you for the invite, David Mounde ).

Tina is the founder of Fordham Global Foresight .

Tina sells insight on managing geo-political risk.

If I had to think of a band or song that maybe speaks to what FGF does, to quote The Cult …

‘She Sells Sanctuary’.

Among the lines with this Cult track: "And the world, the world turns around. And the world and the world, the world drags me down."

When I sat to hear Tina I thought, surely everyone in and closely beyond so-called 'C-suite', political, corporate affairs, media relations and brand reputation influencer networks consider the implications of global political risk for people, businesses and investors.

Surely. Truly. Madly. Deeply.

Maybe.

History has a long tail. Too many of us are short on attention.

The Wall Street Journal in a ‘Heard on the Street’ opinion column today said the global markets rout kicking off this first full week in August is being ‘exaggerated by trend chasers’.

Trend chasers ! ?

The Economist says the slump appears to be driven by the unwinding of speculative bets.

Ok.

Nothing structural, systemic. Just investors pulling back on previous trades they made?

At least, cryptocurrencies showed why they are not the best place to be when markets are in a 'flight-to-quality' or 'dash-for-cash' frame of mind. As 彭博资讯 noted: Bitcoin plunges, Ether has worst drop since 2021 as crypto sinks.

The Financial Times tapped within its evolving commentary into a pastoral, slightly bucolic seasonal vibes perspective: “The market has suddenly moved ‘from a warm summer’s day straight into autumn’, said Antonio Cavarero , head of investments at Generali Investments .”

Rob Lieber writing with the 纽约时报 suggests: “Go fly a kite or wander among beautiful buildings and check in with the market again tomorrow.”

To tap Albert's Red Balloon or Ian's Enduring Love ... as reviewed by The Guardian 's I think I'm right, therefore I am ...

If you can fly a kite or float with a balloon and that really matters, do it.